{"id":1833,"date":"2012-12-22T08:51:54","date_gmt":"2012-12-22T13:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2012-12-22T08:53:46","modified_gmt":"2012-12-22T13:53:46","slug":"news-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/2012\/12\/22\/news-roundup\/","title":{"rendered":"News roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, well, we aren’t quite as back as we thought we were. Turns out, there were a few more end-of-the-semester duties to deal with this week and then a bit of holiday travels. We’re back in the the land of our childhood and can steal some time to do a bit of catching up. There are all the pictures and videos of the past week’s construction activities to share and there’s a semi-positive tale to tell. In addition to that, we (perhaps like you) received Enbridge’s latest construction newsletter and were amused to see our old pal “Dr. Michael Milan” <\/a>smiling up at us from the glossy page; as you can imagine, we’ve got some things to say about that.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, there are some interesting news articles to share if you haven’t seem them yet. Down in Indiana, the Department of Environmental Management held a hearing last week on the Line 6B project. The hearing was requested by our friends at\u00a0Save the Dunes, along with the Hoosier Environmental Council, and the Porter County Chapter of the Izaak Walton League. From what we’ve heard (we were unable to attend, shackled to a desk by student writing!), the meeting went well and the speakers, nearly a dozen of them, raised a number of important questions eloquently. Best of all, the meeting has gotten an excellent amount of newspaper coverage<\/a>. (and more<\/a> and more<\/a>). The groups put together a joint statement<\/a> that smartly describes a number of reasonable measures that can be taken on the project to ensure safety and environmental protection. We will, of course, be following this story very closely.<\/p>\n

Also last week, Enbridge reps were down in Indiana making nice with the good people of Hobart. Somehow, they managed to garner this astonishingly favorable coverage<\/a>. Don’t get us wrong, we’re very happy that Jack Schwerin was able to get Thomas Hodge out to our property and that Hobart Mayor Brian Snedecor\u00a0is so confident than Enbridge really does “care about the community.” But we hope they don’t become complacent. They may yet have cause to revise their assessment of Enbridge’s behavior (though we hope not).<\/p>\n

In national news, we were struck by a referendum recently called for by the forward-looking citizens of Burlington, Vermont<\/a>. They’re not too keen on the idea of Enbridge shipping more dilbit through their backyard, so they decided– not unlike the brave leaders in Brandon Township– to take action. We love it when local municipalities step up, though unfortunately, as we’ve learned here in Michigan, they’re being forced to do so by torpid, unimaginative state and national officials. At any rate, the Burlington action could be a model for others (including us here in Michigan!).<\/p>\n

Down in Texas, the fight over Keystone XL rages on, led in part by our tenacious friend Chris Wilson. For months, we’ve been telling anybody who will listen that what’s happening here with Line 6B in Michigan is totally related to Keystone (and a few members of the press have gotten it). And that’s exactly what the awesome, irrepressible Michelle Barlond-Smith told the House Energy Resource Committee this week. The Texas Observer reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lastly, the New York Times<\/em> has a VERY important story<\/a> on the failures of pipeline companies’ leak detection systems. It reports that<\/p>\n

A forthcoming\u00a0federal report<\/a>\u00a0on pipeline safety has found that members of the general public are more likely to identify oil and gas spills than the pipeline companies\u2019 own leak detection systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, those of us familiar with Marshall already understand this. As we’ve said here on the blog countless times, technology was never the problem; human error was the problem.<\/a>\u00a0And of course, Enbridge has been running around for months telling everyone about all of the great technology that’s going into the new Line 6B– as if that alone is supposed to quell any concerns. The new report– that, and the experience of Marshall– remind us yet again that we should not be seduced by the pipeline companies’ claims. We’ll give our friend (and hero!) Carl Weimer the last word. From the article:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been clear for years that these computerized leak-detection systems don\u2019t work,\u201d said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust and a member of the pipeline agency\u2019s hazardous liquid technical advisory committee, which has reviewed the draft report. \u201cThe question for me is why have regulators continued to allow the pipeline industry to keep selling the public on leak detection systems that don\u2019t work as advertised?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, well, we aren’t quite as back as we thought we were. Turns out, there were a few more end-of-the-semester duties to deal with this week and then a bit of holiday travels. We’re back in the the land of our childhood and can steal some time to do a bit of catching up. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indiana","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1835,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions\/1835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}